


here comes the sun

by erebones



Series: spiritassassin week 2k17 [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, First Meetings, Friends to Lovers, M/M, SpiritAssassin Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 14:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10720749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: As a boy, Baze climbs the garden wall at the Temple of the Whills. This has a lasting effect on him.





	here comes the sun

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the first day of the spiritassassin week 2k17 hosted by fyeahspiritassassin! It's also a fill for the prompts "the way you said I love you" from an anon on tumblr: "not to me" and "loud, so everyone can hear."

Baze isn’t supposed to be here. 

He skinned his knee on his way up the wall, and it’s bleeding a little as he pulls himself up over top and lays flat on his belly at its apex, breathing hard. His palms are stinging, too, but when he checks, they’re only smudged with dirt and rubbed a little bit raw from the climb. He bends his eyes to the ground. 

He thinks he must have found the greenest place in the whole city. In the whole _planet_. The air up here feels different, too, murky and kind of thick, like soup when it’s gone all cold and congealed in the bottom of the bowl. But it doesn’t _smell_ like soup—it smells like dirt, only different. Like tears, a little bit salty, a little bit sweet. Baze breathes in, draws great deep whuffs of it into his skinny chest. It’s nice. And it’s _green_. Everything he can see, cradled in the little grotto hidden up here in the Temple’s enfolded arms, is green. There are flashes of other colors, too, so bright they seem to burn his eyes. He hasn’t seen such colors since he was a little boy, and the rings of NaJedha lit up the sky each night with splendor. 

But those are only half-remembered dreams. This is _real_. With an energetic start, he recognizes some of the bright yellow blobs as being fruits, fresher and more brightly-colored than any of the stuff he’s ever snitched from an unattended market stall. It almost looks as if the hue were painted on with a brush. _Perhaps that’s what the acolytes do,_ he thinks, already hunting for the best way down. _Paint the fruits every morning, so it looks all fine and fancy._

The handholds on this side of the wall are fewer and far between, but he manages to wriggle and slump his way to the ground. It’s soft as hair underfoot, and springy—he hops a few times, delighted, and then throws himself facedown into it and rubs his smooth cheek along the ground. It tickles his nose and pokes cruelly at his unprotected eyeballs by turns, but both sensations only provoke a giddy tide of laughter. 

He rolls onto his back and looks up, and remembers the fruit. There are a few of them hanging right over his head, within easy enough reach if he stood and gave a bit of a leap. Baze grins and starts to get up. 

From somewhere nearby, a twig snaps. Baze goes cold all over. He drops back to the ground and lays still in the long grass, hoping, praying—but why should the gods of the Whills pay him any mind? He is trespassing on _their_ property. If anything, they are likely to throw his prayers in his face. Then, hard on its heels, laughter. _Giggling_. Baze wrinkles his nose and scoots close to the tree, putting in between himself and whoever was intruding on his peaceful… intrusion. He peers around the gnarled trunk carefully. 

There are two of them. A human boy, with a round face and a toothy smile, and a twi’lek, his stubby little _lekku_ not yet grown beyond his dappled green jaw. They’re both dressed like acolytes, in plain rust-red robes. The human’s head is shaved down to a fine black peach fuzz, which makes his ears stick out oddly—Baze touches the shell of his own, vaguely self-conscious even in hiding. 

“ _Chirrut_ ,” the twi’lek is saying—or whining, rather. “We’re going to be caught!”

“No we’re not,” the other boy, Chirrut, says confidently. “Have a little faith, Diso. If you’re worried, sit and meditate about it while _I_ have all the fun!”

“No way!” Diso yelps. He slaps his hand over his mouth, the one not currently held prisoner by Chirrut. Chirrut is holding on _very tightly_. “Wait here.” He detangles himself, somehow, and makes a beeline for the tree Baze is currently hiding behind. He shrinks back, heart in his throat—but then he hears little grunts and the scrabbling of soft-shoed feet on bark, and he realizes Diso is _climbing_ the tree. 

Chirrut, still on the ground, gives a soft little _whoop_ of encouragement. “My hero!” he calls up softly, and laughs when Diso blows a raspberry at him. Then something hits the ground—two somethings. Then three, much heavier, when Diso jumps back to earth. 

“They’re not ripe yet,” the twi’lek says dubiously. “But eat up.”

There’s a stifled giggle, and then a wet smack and Chirrut’s glittering, laughing voice crowing, “I love you!”

“Who’s there?” comes a new voice, much older and pitched lower than any of theirs. Baze bends his knees to his chest and presses back against the bowl of the tree’s tremendous roots, willing himself to disappear into their shadows. “Who’s in the garden after hours?”

After a moment, the two boys glumly raise their voices in confession. Baze holds perfectly still. He hardly even dares to breathe—and somehow, by the grace of the Force, he goes undiscovered. When he is completely sure they’re gone, the boys pulled away by the scruffs of their necks to suffer dish duty, he peers around the tree. On the ground are two small, hard, perfectly sun-yellow fruits, untouched. He scoops them into his pockets one at a time and finds his way back over the wall, daydreaming about how sweet they will taste on the morrow. 

//

The gardens are so fragrant this time of year. Baze finds himself pausing in his work every few minutes just to stand and breathe it in—the leaves unfurling in the humid damp of their vaporators, the earth with its rich, loamy smell underfoot, the flowers budding and bursting open joyously at every turn. Best of all, the tide of spring has turned, and everywhere the early fruit trees are bearing their ponderous burdens with the promise of a bountiful harvest. 

But he can’t tary for too long. There is much work to be done, and he is not so alone in the gardens that he can go about his business at his leisure. A class of younglings is being put to the task of hoeing, which they are partaking of with a great deal more enthusiasm than he remembers having at that age. Amongst the trees, several older guardians have set to with pruning shears, ensuring the autumn cycle will be just as plentiful. And under the shroud of ciris bushes, spreading their tender fronds earthward like the roots of an upside-down tree, Chirrut is standing with his head tipped back and his fingers trailing through the semi-transparent vines in search of berries. 

“Admiring the view?” Diso murmurs at his side, joshing him with an elbow to Baze’s ribs. 

“Hush your tongue,” Baze says, sharper than he means to. Diso is one of the precious few of their friends who know the truth—that Chirrut and Baze have a particularly _intimate_ relationship, for young monks raised together like brothers. Baze isn’t entirely happy about it, but he doesn’t have much say. Diso has a nose for gossip like a vermin for scraps, and he’d rooted out the truth from Chirrut mere hours after their first kiss. 

“I don’t know why you’re so uptight about it,” Diso says with a shrug. “We’re not like the Jedi, you know. You wouldn’t get kicked out for making moon eyes at another brother of the Whills.”

Baze just scowls and goes back to his weeding. It’s true, he wouldn’t be cut off from the temple—he might not even be reprimanded. So far his relationship with Chirrut has been fairly chaste. They are both training hard, and Baze respects his elders too much to desecrate the sanctity of temple grounds. But the wellspring of love he carries inside of him is a vast and untenable thing; some days it feels like it’s on the verge of spilling over, refusing to be contained by Baze’s puny mortal efforts. 

He steals another look across the garden. Chirrut has sprung up a few more inches in the last six months, and he’s grown all lanky, his robes hitting just above his ankles. He kicked off his sandals some time ago and his toes are grimy with dirt. He thinks of later tonight, when Chirrut will crawl into bed without showering first, and how he will only laugh when Baze chides him for dirtying the sheets. _We could dirty them far worse, you know, if we chose_ , Chirrut will say with a smirk, and he will giggle and flail when Baze tickles him, sigh when Baze leans down and kisses his sweet mouth. 

As if drawn by the reverberation of Baze’s thoughts, Chirrut ceases his rummaging in the ciris branches and turns his way. His dark eyes bunch up at the corners in a smile when he sees Baze looking. Diso snorts. 

“Right. That’s my cue.” He gives Baze a hefty slap on the back and slinks away to another corner of the plot. 

Apparently taking this as invitation, Chirrut tucks his basket under his arm and comes toward Baze. He is suddenly paralyzed with fear—they are very much in the open, with the delighted chatter of the younglings in his ears. Whills, Master Tiat is _right there._

“All right, Malbus, spill,” Chirrut says when he’s close enough— _too_ close, really, but Baze doesn’t have the heart to step away. Chirrut smells clean and fresh like the garden, and a little bit like the sweat of an honest day’s work. His robes, in slight disarray from his labors, are askew on his shoulders, exposing rather more of his neck than is usual or appropriate. Baze flushes and looks down. “What were you gossiping about with Diso?”

“Nothing,” Baze mumbles. “He was teasing me about something.”

“ _Something_?” Chirrut smirks and fishes in his basket for a few berries. He pops them into his mouth one at a time, ignoring Baze’s muffled exclamation, and when he grins his teeth are stained purple. “What sort of _something_?”

Baze swallows hard a few times and then murmurs, as softly as he can, “You’re very pretty today.”

“Oh!” Chirrut says, face crinkling with delight. “That’s lovely of you to say. Here, have a berry.”

“Chirrut, we can’t. They’re for—harvest,” he stammers. 

“So? A few won’t be missed. You can’t tell me that in the whole of the Guardians’ long history there has _never_ been someone who snitched a ciris berry or two.” He grabs Baze’s soiled hand and places two knobbly little berries into his palm. “There. They’re more tart than sweet, but still good.”

Baze gives a quick glance around. No one seems to be looking. With a quick gulp, he swallows them down and winces at the bright burst of flavor on his tongue. “Yeah,” he says, licking his teeth clean of the evidence. “Still good.”

Chirrut’s sharp-eyed smile softens. “It just seems to me,” he murmurs, “that there are some things in life that ought to be appreciated to the fullest. What point is there in following the Force if we turn our back on the more enjoyable aspects of its manifestation?”

“Um. Are we still talking about berries?”

Chirrut throws his head back and laughs. Like a magnet, every eye is drawn to their little patch of sunlit garden, and the back of Baze’s neck prickles at their scrutiny. “Were we ever talking about berries?” Chirrut wonders. He deposits his basket on the ground, gently, and reaches up to tangle his fingers in Baze’s robes. It’s a clumsy gesture, but honest, and when his shortsighted friend busses a kiss to the corner of his mouth instead of the middle, Baze’s chest swells up like a balloon until he feels ready to pop.

“Chirrut!” Ears burning, he tries to pull away, but Chirrut clings to him like a monkey, dragging him back to push their foreheads together. 

“No. I’ve had enough of hiding.” There’s a fraught note in his voice that hurts Baze, somewhere deep inside. He stops struggling. “We have committed no sin, my darling. The Whills smile upon us and upon our love, and anyone—” He stops to raise his voice. “And anyone who disagrees is welcome to meet me in the dojo, and we will let the Force decide who is in the right.” He drops again, voice to a whisper and heels to the ground, and Baze comes with him, burying his face in Chirrut’s neck. “I love you, Baze Malbus. And I don’t care who knows it.”

“You’re a reckless fool,” Baze grumbles, but he’s too alight with love to really mean it. Someone, probably Diso, begins applauding, and Baze hauls Chirrut into his arms to kiss him some more. 

Later, after dinner—and after a gentle scold from the Abbyx asking them not to engage in such _public_ displays of affection in the future—they tangle together in bed, dressed in their sleep clothes and sharing the same pillow. Chirrut has pulled Baze down to lay against his chest, and he keeps time to his heartbeat, a dull and rhythmic thudding against his eardrum. 

“Do you think he’s jealous?” Baze murmurs. 

“Hmmm? Who, love?”

“Diso?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then a squawk of confused laughter. Chirrut flails upright, and Baze must follow suit. “ _Diso_? Where on earth did you get that idea?”

“Well—I just—” Baze stops and falters into stillness. His memories of life before the temple are vague, sometimes indiscernible, but one particular day stands out in his mind, fragrant and yellow-bright against a backdrop of green. “You were childhood sweethearts, weren’t you?”

“ _What?_ Baze, good heavens, I don’t know where you get these ideas! We were never—no.” Chirrut wrinkles up his nose and flops back against the pillow, giggling uncontrollably. “Diso is like my brother, he always has been. You are my brother, too, but—you are more than that, too. The only one who has ever been more.” He reaches up with gentle fingers and traces the swoop of Baze’s eyelid. “Is that why you don’t like him?”

“I don’t not like him!” Baze protests, even though its half a lie. Diso has always grated on his nerves a little. He’s only ever attributed it to a clash of personalities, but now he wonders if it might be because of that memory, the cheerful, childish _I love you_ that still clings to the taste of yellow fruits in summertime. He digs a ciris seed from his teeth with the tip of his tongue and loops his arms around Chirrut’s waist. “It doesn’t matter. I have _you_. And I’m allowed to keep you.” It’s a novel feeling. A part of him hopes he never gets used to it. 

“I wouldn’t let it be any other way,” Chirrut declares. He puts his hand on Baze’s chest and cranes his neck to kiss him up under his jaw. “I _am_ sorry I… kissed you in front of everyone. I know you hate being the center of attention.”

“We couldn’t hide forever,” Baze says peaceably. It’s true, he _had_ been a little uncomfortable in the moment, but the reward was more than worth it. He cradles the back of Chirrut’s shorn head in his hands and shuts his eyes. When he sleeps, he dreams of gardens, and a tangled tree bearing many fruits reaching up to a sun-yellow sky. 


End file.
